This Week: Iraq Flails, Egypt Punishes, and Israel Searches

Kurdistan Regional Government President Masoud Barzani greets U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the presidential palace in Irbil, the capital of northern Iraq's Kurdistan autonomous region, June 24, 2014. This is the first visit to the Kurdish region by a U.S. Secretary of State since 2006. (Smialowski/Courtesy Reuters).

Israel-Palestine.Israel today announced the identities of two main suspects, both Hamas members, in the kidnapping of three Yeshiva students two weeks ago in Hebron. Earlier this week, the IDF conducted its most significant military operation in the West Bank in over a decade earlier as it searched for the teenagers, arresting over 400 Palestinians. On Monday, Palestinian protesters in Ramallah threw rocks at Palestinian Authority security forces, accusing them of collaboration with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called upon Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to abrogate the unity agreement with Hamas from earlier this month forming a technocratic government.

Following his stop in Cairo on Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry visited Jordan and Iraq, where he met Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. Kerry promised the Iraqi leader sustained U.S. support while urging the prime minister to push for the formation of an inclusive government. U.S. officials are privately reportedly seeking an alternative to Maliki. Kerry said the insurgency by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is not only an “existential threat” to Iraq, but to the entire region. Kerry also visited Iraqi Kurdistan, where he met Masoud Barzani, President of Iraq’s Kurdish region. The State Department announced yesterday that Kerry will return to the region on Friday to meet Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah to discuss the Iraq crisis.

While We Were Looking Elsewhere

Lebanon. A suicide bomber killed himself in a botched attempt to blow up a Beirut hotel yesterday, the third such attack in Lebanon this week. A bombing Monday night near a checkpoint and café led to the death of the assailant and a security officer and injured 20 others who were watching a World Cup match. The first in this string of attacks was in eastern Lebanon last Friday, when a suicide bomber used a car bomb to kill an officer and wounded several others. While not claiming responsibility for the attacks, Sirajuddin Zurayqat, a spokesman for the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, an Al Qaeda-linked group, said that such attacks would continue as long as Hezbollah continues to take part in the Syrian civil war.

Libya. Prominent human rights activist and lawyer Salwa Bugaighis was assassinated in her Benghazi home yesterday, casting a shadow over Libya’s parliamentary election proceedings. After weeks of the most serious violence in their country since the 2011 uprising, few Libyans headed to the polls to elect the membership of a 200-seat House of Representatives to replace the current interim parliament elected in July 2012. This is the third legislative election to take place in Libya since the end of the uprising in 2011. Though Khalifa Hiftar, the renegade general who has been conducting an offensive to purge the country of Islamist militias, imposed a 24-hour ceasefire, there were reports of several attacks on security officials and their headquarters.

Jordan. Militant cleric Abu Qatada was acquitted today by a military court on charges of planning a terrorist attack on an American school in Amman in the late 1990s. The ruling marked a reversal of a conviction 14 years ago in which Abu Qatada had been sentenced to death. The cleric will not be released, however, as he will continue to be held in connection with a case regarding a plot to bomb tourists at millennium celebrations in 2000. British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said today that Britain will not allow him back if he is freed; Qatada had been granted asylum and was living in the UK under house arrest prior to his deportation last year.

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Middle East Matters explores the intersection of U.S. foreign policy and Middle East developments with special focus on Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine.

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